Mid-Size Public Library Breaks Free from Expensive Discovery System

The Situation

This is a mid-size public library system serving 45,000 patrons across 8 branches in a Midwestern city. They're well-run. The staff are competent. The director knows her system. They've been using the same discovery system for six years - one of the major platforms that library discovery vendors sell. It's technically functional. Patrons can search. They find books.

But the costs kept climbing. Year one of the contract: $35,000 annually. By year six, the annual cost had escalated to $40,000 without a corresponding improvement in search quality or patron experience. The contract had the typical escalation clauses built in - 3% annual increases, justified by "feature enhancements" that the library's patrons never noticed. The vendor was also bundling services that the library didn't use or need, pricing them as a package. Exit penalties were substantial. If the library wanted to leave before year seven of the ten-year contract, they'd owe $15,000 in termination fees.

The Problem

The library's systems librarian noticed something the director did understand immediately: $40,000a year was unsustainable, and the ROI was invisible. Patron satisfaction with search results hadn't improved. The system still required manual record cleanup. Relevance ranking was mediocre at best. Meanwhile, the library was making staffing cuts in other areas - they'd eliminated a part-time youth services position to help manage the budget shortfall. The discovery system was consuming money that could have gone to people, programming, or collections. And they were trapped. The contract terms made leaving feel impossible. The vendor knew this. That's why the penalties were so high. Lock-in is the business model.

The Solution

We started by doing a detailed contract analysis. Contract language matters. The vendor's exit penalty was punitive - but it was also negotiable. Most libraries assume it isn't. They assume "15,000 termination fee" means 15,000 dollars. But that language was in a contract from 2020. The library's situation had changed. Budget cuts are a legitimate negotiating position. We drafted a letter to the vendor positioning this not as a problem with their product, but as a budget crisis that might force difficult decisions. We cited specific cost-benefit analysis numbers showing that other libraries in similar service areas were paying 40% less for competitive or better systems. We offered a specific figure: $8,000 to exit cleanly. Not a demand. A proposal based on mutual benefit. Their alternative is a library that stops paying and disputes the termination fee in writing with attorneys involved. That's expensive too.

Surprisingly, the vendor negotiated. They counteroffered $12,000. We negotiated down to $10,000. The library paid it. The exit took four months of back-and-forth, but the $10,000 exit fee meant the total cost of leaving a bad contract was $10K, not $15K. Then came the real work: evaluating open-source alternatives. The library's IT director and systems librarian spent six weeks testing three different open-source discovery platforms. They imported sample data. They looked at search quality, customization options, hosting requirements, and staff training needs. They came to a realistic assessment: the open-source option would require more hands-on maintenance than the vendor system, but it would give them control and flexibility. More importantly, the annual cost would drop to $8,000 - mostly for hosting and support.

Implementation was the hard part. Open-source systems require actual technical maintenance. The vendor system let the library outsource thinking about infrastructure. With the open-source choice, the library's IT team owned the responsibility. They had to set up hosting, manage backups, handle configuration, and fix problems when they emerged. This meant staff training was essential. The systems librarian spent time learning the system deeply. The library hired a part-time systems consultant (4 hours/week for the first three months, then 2 hours/week for ongoing support) at $50/hour. The total first-year technical support cost was $3,200. Combined with hosting and licensing, the open-source solution cost $11,200 in year one (higher than expected due to setup costs), but would drop to $8,000 in year two and beyond.

The Results

Within three months of launch, the library compared search result relevance in the new open-source system versus their old vendor system using the same queries. For 70% of their test cases, search results actually improved. The system they left behind wasn't inherently better - it was just vendor-controlled and proprietary. Patron feedback was positive. The new system loaded faster. Boolean search functionality was more intuitive. The library's own librarians could now customize result rankings based on their collection, something the vendor system didn't permit. Here's the real math: Year one, total cost: entry fee ($10K) + technical support ($11,200) = $21,200. But they eliminated the annual $40K discovery system payment, saving $18,800 in the first year while accounting for the transition cost. By year two, the $8,000 annual cost represented a $32,000 annual savings compared to the vendor platform. That's money the library redirected to collections and staff. They didn't hire back the youth services position immediately, but that financial pressure eased. The library had more control over their budget.

Key Takeaway

What this case study demonstrates is that vendor lock-in isn't a permanent condition. Libraries assume their contracts are unchangeable, but contract language is negotiable. Exit penalties are theater - designed to feel insurmountable to people who haven't negotiated before. A reasonable cost-benefit argument to a vendor can actually work. The vendor would rather negotiate than risk a library's public dispute over the termination fee or the reputation hit of a library switching away. More importantly, this case study shows that "open-source alternative" doesn't mean "worse." It means different tradeoffs. Different can be better if your library can manage the operational responsibility. For a library with decent IT capacity, the open-source path can actually provide superior product quality at a lower cost. The barrier isn't technical. It's psychological. Libraries accept being charged money by vendors because "that's how library systems work." It's not. It's just how some library systems choose to operate.